BWW Preview: Newly Restored TALES OF HOFFMAN to play The Cinefamily

A luscious new 4K digital restoration of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1951 Technicolor film TALES OF HOFFMAN (in English) will be screened at The Cinefamily, March 13 - 19. This new restoration is supervised by Martin Scorsese and Oscar winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker, wife of director Powell and Scorsese's longtime film editor, and contains eight minutes of never before seen footage along with newly restored footage not seen since the 1951 release.

Based on the fanciful 1881 opera by Jacques Offenbach, it stars The Red Shoes' Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann, and Ludmilla Tchérina. Each shot is inspired by the music, as stunning visual effects make the highly theatrical story pulse with life. Scorsese was obsessed with Powell and Pressburger's film, saying it was a major influence on his editing of Raging Bull.

Hoffman, a poet, tells the tale of three lost loves to his friends in a bar one night. In the first he is tricked into falling in love with a mechanical doll named Olympia (Shearer) by a greedy puppet-maker only to see her be destroyed. Next he loses his soul to Giulietta (Tchérina), an exotic Venetian courtesan who betrays him, and finally, he falls for an opera singer named Antonia (Ann Ayars) until she dies in his arms of consumption.

Michael Powell (1905-1990) and Emeric Pressburger (1902-1988) collaborated for over 30 years on some of the most beautifully-conceived color films of all time, including The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, and A Matter of Life and Death. Theirs has long been acknowledged as the most artistically brilliant creative partnership in British film history,

Don't miss this rare opportunity to see TALES OF HOFFMAN at one of the coolest movie houses in town. If you've never been to the Cinefamily for one of their silent movies or regular screenings, you definitely want to put it on your list of things to do in LA.

Moira Shearer as Olympia

Robert Helpmann and Ludmilla Tchérina

Moira Shearer as Stella in the Dragonfly Ballet (prologue)

TALES OF HOFFMAN
March 13 - 19 at The Cinefamily
133 minutes / DCP / Color / 1951
Distributor: Rialto Pictures
Click Here for tickets. ($12/free for Cinefamily members)

Pictured above: Ludmilla Tchérina as Guilietta
All photos courtesy of Riato Pictures/Studiocanal

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